Hobbes treated Scripture texts as the enemy’s defensive outworks

Evidence

Writing from Paris to his “most honor’d friend, Mr Francis Godolphin” (brother of Hobbes’s deceased friend, Sydney Godolphin, who had provided him “with real testimonies of his good opinion”), Hobbes admits that his own constructions, his “discourse of Common-wealth,” may very well offend a number of people. … Either way, says Hobbes, it’s nothing personal, “for I speak not of the men, but (in the Abstract) of the Seat of Power.” Hobbes goes on to locate the potential nexus of harm, arguably the most offensive part of his discourse, in his treatment-his use and abuse-of the Bible, certain texts of which, he says matter-of-factly, “are the Outworks of the Enemy”: “That which perhaps may most offend, are certain Texts of Holy Scripture, alledged by me to other purpose than ordinarily they used to be by others. But I have done it with due submission, and also (in order to my Subject) necessarily; for they are the Outworks of the Enemy, from whence they impugne the Civill Power.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 350

Categorization

• XREF: Hobbes positioning Scripture — the theological/political text — as the enemy’s weaponry connects to how this book constellates figurations of the hostile sacred in political theory, which reverberates with the broader theological-political work of the Islamophobia-cluster books.